title: Silicon multi-branch nanostructures for decent field emission and excellent electrical transport.
abstract: We report on the synthesis, field electron emission and electric transport properties of a novel nanomaterial: ordered arrays of crystallized silicon multi-branch nanostructures. A decent field electron emission with relatively low turn-on field of 3.16 V µm⁻¹ and high field-enhancement factor of 1252 was received for the silicon nanobranches. The relevancies between field-emission current-voltage characteristic, turn-on field, threshold field and sample-anode distance have been thoroughly analyzed. In addition, electrical transport measurements revealed a small electrical resistance of 0.51 MΩ for as-prepared silicon nanobranches. In contrast, by improving the silicon nanobranch-electrode contact, vacuum annealing dramatically reduced the electrical resistance, by a factor approaching two, while thermal oxidation resulted in a much higher resistance due to the amorphous oxide coating of the silicon nanobranches, both of the current versus voltage curves became more linear and symmetrical, and the transport stability was obviously improved.
authors.affiliation: Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics-School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Yihua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Chunyi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhi
authors.forename: Yoshio
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bando
authors.forename: Dmitri
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Golberg